


Reasons of Guilt

by CarnivalofBrokenDolls (yourrhinestoneeyes)



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Gen, Guilty Rick backstory, Hurt/Comfort, Major character death - Freeform, Pocket Mortys related, sad things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-15 13:47:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5787493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourrhinestoneeyes/pseuds/CarnivalofBrokenDolls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Guilty Rick has a lot of things he's taking to his grave including the accidental death of his own grandson and the years he spent trying to bring him back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

This was not supposed to happen; by all reason this shouldn’t have happened.

“C-come on you stupid little asshole.” Rick continued to maybe too roughly shake Morty’s shoulders in an attempt to get a response from the teenager, but he wasn’t getting anything.

His grandson’s body was still limp, his head tossed forward then thumped against the garage floor.

“God damn it M-Morty i-if you just listened to m-me one fucking time shit like this wouldn’t happen.”

The boy’s eyes were still glazed, still not seeing anything. Rick felt blood still running over his hands and along his forearms. It wasn’t his fault the kid was such an idiot, trying to act like h knew more than his grandpa. Fucking going and pretending he could go off on his own, that Rick was the one putting him in danger. If he wasn’t such an idiot he wouldn’t be dead right now.

“Shit”

It was like the realization just sort of hit all at once. It had hit before, had hit when the portal opened and Morty came flying through it and landed on the floor with a sickening thud, but after that Rick had just gone into immediate denial. Now he was back at realizing his grandson was dead, very dead, and Rick had learned countless times that death can’t be fixed.

“Fuck….Fuck, fucking shit. God damn it Morty.”

He felt defeated as he sat on the cold concrete pulling the kid’s body onto his lap, head pressed against his chest and arms wrapped protectively around him. This was his Morty, he told himself he’d never get a replacement, and he’d never let anything too serious happen to the little shit. Here he was though and here Morty was, still bleeding, and still dead. He’d been dead for nearly twenty minutes now.

Now Rick was realizing it. Now he was noticing how silent the garage was, realizing that soon Beth or Jerry would be home. 

“I-it’s okay M-Morty I’ll fix this; I’ll f-find a way to fix you right up. Don’t w-worry about a thing.”

He was a fucking genius there was always a way to fix things he fucked up.


	2. Chapter 2

Rick wasn’t rich, but he was resourceful and bordering on the mad side of genius. He allowed himself a good two hours of drinking and staring at Morty’s corpse that he now had laid out on a blanket. Perhaps in that time he dreamed that the kid would wake up, wake up and start complaining like he did all the time. Never happened. He was as dead as anybody could get, as dead as a lot of the people Rick had encountered in his life including his own ex-wife.

He didn’t want to let this shit happen. Nope not again. Not like her, not like past friends, or casual others. Rick had money, he had a garage full of junk he could easily use for something…..Something…..Yeah he’d figure it out.

When his drinking was finished he started on working, on thinking. He worked on spending too much money on things that could work, might work. The entire time he thought about the money he was spending; he’d originally planned on just blowing it all on drugs and booze and being buried with it. Why fucking leave anything for anybody, fuck them. That was until getting back in contact with Beth, meeting his grandchildren and feeling that deep penetrating fear when he noticed that Morty could end up just like him. At first glance the kid seemed like Jerry; he had his stupid curly brown hair and his dumb eyes, but his stuttering and his temper all screamed Rick.

The old man couldn’t help but smirk and give a glance back at his grandson’s corpse when he thought about it. He loved it when Morty would flip out and snap at him, curse him out, and tell him he hates him. Yeah it would take him by surprise and being told to fuck yourself isn’t the best, but somebody so timid and stupid standing up like that out of nowhere amused Rick.

Now if he could just find a way to fix…..To fix, this.

Could you fix death?

“No you can’t fix death you idiot.” He scolded himself.

“G-great now I’m fucking talking to myself. Thanks Morty, real good job there.”

Okay so he couldn’t resurrect him; none of that horror movie bull shit that Morty loved so much recently. 

There was another idea, a bad idea, but fucking Hell Rick was getting desperate. 

He picked a scalpel up from his work desk and went over to the teenager’s body. Rick knelt next to him, he placed a hand on his head petting his hair. He forced himself to detach from what he was doing as he gently as possibly pierced the blade into the boy’s skin and began carving.

“Sorry Morty”

Just a little bit…there that was good, fine.

If he combined it with the DNA of something else, something more thriving then this could work.

“Yeah, y-yeah this is fine…you're a genius Rick, a fucking genius.”

 

He spent the entire night binge drinking then working. He went through the collection of DNA samples and lifeforms he kept underneath the garage, went through every chemical and toxin he had created over the past few years until he found what bits worked and what bits might work. He needed this to work. He was a super mad man genius this was going to work.

This would work and Morty would be alive again, soon. It wasn’t going to be right away, a slow process, but Rick was there.

Rick placed a hand against the warmed glass and looked in at it; it wasn’t much right now. It was just green liquid and small organisms going around, but in a few weeks they would turn into something, and eventually Morty would be back.

His Morty. He wouldn’t have to go to the Council and ‘buy’ a replacement Morty like they would prefer he do. Fuck that he wouldn’t do that, this was his Morty.

“D-don’t worry Morty I-I’ll have you back to n-normal in no time, won’t even remember any of this happened. Promise I won’t hold it over your head that you were a little asshole and got yourself killed and made grandpa work his ass off to bring you back to life.”

He spent what was left of the night or the morning sitting on the floor with his back to the glass and wanting the process to go faster.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm like really thankful for all the hits, kudos, and comments I've been getting on this fic. This is my first Rick and Morty fan fiction so I was sort of nervous about how it might turn out and if anybody would read it, so it's surprising and makes me really happy you guys like it so much. This has a few more chapters left then I think I'll work on other Rick and Morty fics, if anybody has any request/ideas feel free to send them.

Rick rummaged through the fridge trying to find the alcohol he’d hidden in back; he hadn’t been in the house for days now. Not since Morty died, no wait not dead he was busy fixing that. He’d check on him; check how he was doing; he sort of hated leaving the kid alone in the dark lab beneath the garage.

“Hey dad where’s Morty?”

He grabbed the first beer bottle he saw even if it wasn’t really what he wanted and stood up.

“He’s b-been been busy helping me.”

He opened it and took a long drink from it.

“You know how Jerry gets when Morty misses too many days of school.”

“Yeah I know, d-don’t worry he’ll be in school by the end of next week, and Jerry can s-stop fucking whining. Seriously Beth real re-real winner of a husband you got there.”

Rick reached for a second bottle out of the fridge then closed the door. 

“What I just should have not married him?”

“Preferably”

He never knew what the hell his ex-wife was thinking when she okayed their teen daughter to marry such a fucking idiot. Rick remembered hearing about it, seeing his loser son in law for the first time and wondering how bad it would be if he just shot the idiot.

“Dad you know Jerry does try….He’s not the smartest person in the world or the most responsible or….He’s an okay father and he’s looking for a job today.”

Rick leaned back against the fridge so he could properly face his daughter. He didn’t get it; she was a Sanchez, his genes flowed through her and yet she made a dumb decision like marrying Jerry Smith. Just like his wife had made the mistake of marrying him, maybe that’s where Beth inherited it from. That dumb weak sense of dedicating herself to somebody who was a waste of her time.

Welp there was another reason to drink this morning, on to bottle number two.

“Look Beth you’re…..Just d-don’t fucking let your whole life be about taking care of Jerry, th-thankless fucking job.”

She nodded her head in agreement, but didn’t say anything. Rick knew he wasn’t winning any father of the year awards; he wasn’t winning anything. He could use now to be a better father; he could tell her she was smart and gorgeous and could do better as a single mom with a high powered career as a real surgeon than being married to a selfish moron. He wouldn’t tell her that, not in a million years; maybe in a suicide note some day or in his will.

What will? He didn’t have shit to leave anybody.

Rick placed a hand on Beth’s shoulder, she gave him a sad smile, and nothing was said when he left her alone in the kitchen so he could return to the underground lab he had set up.

On his way down to the lab he felt this weird mixture of anxiety and excitement. Each time he went down there he felt this way; there was this part of him that was stupid where he expected Morty to be down there waiting for him. The kid would be alive and well, sitting on a chair playing games on his iphone. The other part of him knew that wouldn’t happen and that the lab was going to be as cold and lifeless as it always was.

When he reached the lab the feeling of isolation hit him. No sounds that signified life outside of the artificial kind; no Morty asking what they would be doing. Rick drank as he made his way to the tank where his project was.

“L-looking better Morty” He said to the life form in the tank.

It wasn’t much, something just about a foot in height nowhere near fully grown. There were two eyes, a mouth, and hair was growing in, but not much else signifying a human. Not a lot signifying this was Morty, his Morty. He was getting there though, it wouldn’t be too much longer and he’d have Morty back.

“Just a f-few more weeks Morty, you’ll be all fixed up, a-and we can get back to normal. I’ll work on keeping so much shit from you.”

None of this would have happened if he told the kid more. He thought it was best to keep things from his grandson, keep him in the dark about close to everything, but obviously that turned out to be a bad idea. It was fucking stupid on his part to think sheltering the kid from certain things was the smart way to do it. Wouldn’t happen again, not this time.

He watched as the thing in the tank slowly blinked. X1, not a thing; this was X1 Morty.

“F-fucking hurry up Morty grandpa doesn’t have as many years as you.”

Rick worked on other things; he worked on new weapons, new viruses, and even toyed with the idea of other planets that he could own and destroy when he grew bored of them. Every hour he’d go back to the tank to check on X1 Morty and make sure he was doing fine. Doing as fine as any barely sentient life form could really be.

By around midnight he quit toying with other things and put all his focus on X1. Not like there was much he could do; pump proteins into the tank through a tube in order to nourish and ‘feed’ him. He mostly just sat in a chair and talked to him, touch the tank to see that it was real. 

“Y-you remind me of me Morty, I don’t l-like that. Least you a-aren’t a total dumb ass like Jerry. I had r-real real high hopes for you Morty; I still do. Everything in th-this this lab belongs to you w-when grandpa dies.”

More slow blinks in response to what he was saying.

“Little shit I di-didn’t didn’t have problems with feelings before I ca-came back here. I-I fucking had a life Morty; tra-travelling solo and banging hot space broads and guys. Then I come back here and end up h-having having to watch after your dumb little ass. I’m not used to c-caring about people Morty.”

Ricks replaced their Mortys with new Mortys, they didn’t grow attached. They didn’t feel obligated to take care of the little fucking morons or hope they’ll grow up to be something. Mortys died all the time that’s how they managed to mostly stay between twelve and fifteen years of age.

“I’m I’m going to make sure you get a future Morty, you’re going to break the mold. Y-you’re going to grow up and be like…. Be better than me, don’t fuck up like your mom and dad. Don’t become a selfish fuck like me.”

The lack of responses annoyed him, but it felt like a twisted confessional. 

Rick moved from his chair to the floor leaning against the tank like he’d been doing far too many times. It was a pain on his back and waking up hung over on the floor wasn’t what he wanted in life, but he didn’t like leaving X1 Morty alone. 

He only woke up a couple of times with the delusion that Morty was still the way he should be and not some embryo like creation in a tank of green liquids.


	4. Chapter 4

Rick sat on the ground holding what could be his grandson in his arms. This grotesque nearly formless little blob that mostly was a small torso and a head. There were arms, tiny barely existent and they wiggled. A normal person who was sober and sane would find this creature, this creation repugnant and horrific; even inhumane, but Rick didn’t consider it that way. He loved it, loved him; this was his Morty and fucking shit he was not going to let something happen to him again.

Nope not again, never again. This was all he had left. The money was gone; his own life was quickly fleeting. The small little thing he held against his chest cried and wriggled and he knew it had to be feeling pain and for a second that made him hate himself. Something in Rick was still sane enough to know this wasn’t right, this wasn’t how he should be handling Morty’s death; he couldn’t just recreate him like this, but he was so close.

“Shh shh it’s okay buddy, grandpa’s got you. I won’t let anything happen to you, o-okay? Yeah that’s it, I’ll put you back in the tank in a second. Ju-just just wanted to….”

He just wanted to see he was real, that this creature was real. He pet his fingers through the thin brown hairs growing from X1’s head and told himself for the millionth time that he would grow bigger and some day he would be Morty all over again. Just hopefully he wouldn’t be pissed off when he was back to normal.


	5. Chapter 5

“Hey M-Morty you’re looking better.” 

X1 had grown and changed, grown into something a good several inches taller in height. The eyes were more prominent, the arms were forming, but he worried they might not form as quickly as they should. Soon, eventually; this was going to work out, this was going to really fucking work out.

He watched the creation in the tank, its eyes looked back at him and when he moved through the lab the eyes would follow him. That was good, he was pretty sure that was good; it was doing things way more sentient. This version of Morty could move around the tank, watch Rick as he worked. He felt like this version could understand everything he was saying when he did talk to it.

“Do-don’t don’t worry Morty I’ll have you back to n-normal soon. Ju-just just a little while longer and this will be all behind us, just the two of us again doing what we always do. I rea-really meant it Morty I won’t fuck up like last time, wo-won’t keep shit from you.”

He just didn’t know how well the kid could handle learning all the dark dirty things, there were things even Rick didn’t want to think about or admit from his past. He’d done and seen so much shit that it left him fucked up, he couldn’t imagine how it could fuck this kid up.

Looking at the tank though he knew he’d already well past fucked Morty up.

It all seemed to be going alright until the tank beeped followed by familiar whimpering. He hadn’t heard Morty’s voice for weeks now, for way too long and at first he felt happy hearing even just a pained whimper thinking maybe this was a nightmare and his grandson was still well and alive. That was until he realized the cries were coming from the tank and the beeping was getting louder.

“Shit”

Rick ran to the tank and was quick to open the top and reach into the warm liquid to pull out the crying creation. The beeping ceased as soon as Morty was removed from it; Rick settled down on the floor with his creation cradled in his arms. It wiggled and cried and its eyes that looked just like Morty’s eyes stared up at him with this odd sense of pleading that made Rick feel like a monster, but hey that wouldn’t be the first time he felt that way. He gently laid Morty down on his lap long enough to remove his lab coat so he could wrap it around the still growing and still crying creature.

He cradled it against his chest hoping to somehow get it to settle down.

“It’s okay M-Morty I got you, shh hey it’s okay now.”

He felt worried and scared, honestly he felt like he was going to have an anxiety attack or just break down crying. This was getting too out of hand, even for him. Even without hearing it speak he knew this thing was in pain, it was getting harder to feed it; the alien DNA mixed with Morty’s DNA wasn’t working out the way that he had hoped it would. He had dreamed it would work fine, turn out smoothly; Morty would grow quickly maybe with some obvious differences due to the new DNA, but it would make him stronger. That wasn’t the case though; he had this, he had this soft fleshed creature that was wailing in pain and looking at him with eyes that screamed this was all his fault.

Rick pulled his legs up against himself, held Morty closer to his chest and rest his cheek against the top of his head.

“I’m s-sorry Morty, I didn’t me-mean for it to be like this. I-I don’t know wh-what to do, I can’t ju-just just let you die again Morty.”

He could kill it so easily and so effortlessly that Morty wouldn’t even feel it. Rick couldn’t live with the thought of killing his grandson, seeing him die for a second time. Not this Morty, not the one he’d known. Some sense of rational thinking told him this wasn’t even really his Morty, wasn’t Morty at all; this was a lab experiment made by a sick old man playing God again. That didn’t make him do anything rational.

“I-it’s okay X46…. Pl-please please don’t cry, I fu-fucking told you I can’t do anything to help. I just…. God wha-what the fuck is wrong with me?”

X46 continued moving and crying and when it wasn’t straight up crying it was whimpering and the sound was making Rick’s head start to hurt and he kept his face buried against the thick brown hair on the creature’s head and curled his fingers against the lab coat keeping its body warm. He already knew this was another night he’d cry himself to sleep on the floor holding this abomination that he could never let go.


	6. Chapter 6

He felt like he was out of options at this point, it was all over now. His money was out, he had no other thoughts on how to help or fix Morty. Rick couldn’t get access to any other DNA that just might make him hurt less, make him grow and evolve at a faster pace so that hopefully he’d be normal again.

He didn’t even have the balls to put his creation out of its misery.

So he’d just put himself out of his misery, it seemed like the best course of action. A guilt ridden Rick who couldn’t bear the thought of replacing his Morty with another one, one that wouldn’t have the same memories of him. Not that those were great memories to have, he’d been a shit person to the kid. He’d put him down and insulted him at every turn, that’s why they were where they were now.

He couldn’t live with this, couldn’t live like this. Rick settled in the corner of his lab, he finished what was left in the bottle before throwing it across the room. He held Morty in his arms, the creature that strongly resembled his grandson watched him and each of his movements. Rick looked down at it, at him.

“I-I’m sorry Mo-Morty I don’t know how to fix this and I c-can’t can’t just kill you. I can’t do it Morty, you gotta und-understand that.”

He pressed a kiss to the top of his head, he pressed the gun against his own head. It would be better off this way.


	7. Chapter 7

It was really a shame he couldn't have just waited a few more weeks. If he had then he would have seen his test subject Morty grow and evolve even more until he was almost completely back to normal. Not everything about his appearance was the way that it ought to be; his legs were practically useless and he was missing his thumbs, but he was still Morty. Against all odds he had managed to survive in the lab beneath the garage, more painful growths until he was mostly his old self. The more memories he regained and the more able he became over the passing days the more it hit him that Rick was dead. At first it hadn't struck him, he hadn't realized he was being held in the arms of his dead grandfather. It wasn't until a couple of weeks passed he really took notice of the slumped over corpse in the corner of the dark lab. It just hit him, hit him all at once like this was something that literally just occurred when obviously Rick had been dead for weeks now.

"Rick?"

The body didn't move, no annoyed questions being barked in his direction.

Morty took hold of the old man's shoulders giving a gentle shake, nothing at all. His body just fell further forward until he was laying against the teenager.

"Ri-Rick come on, g-grandpa,"

He stroked his fingers through the other man's blood soaked blue hair, he still wasn't moving. Dead, Rick Sanchez was dead.

The teen remembered the days of evolving, he remembered the day he had died. The things his grandfather had confessed to him in those weeks all in the hope that his grandson would eventually go back to normal, that he would forgive him for being such an asshole. Then he just went and did this, put an end to things before he could see how it might all turn out.

"Ri-Rick you st-stupid stupid asshole"

Morty knew he should leave, there was a wheelchair in the room he could use and take the elevator back up to the garage. He needed to tell his mom that Rick was dead, avoid telling her that just a few weeks ago he'd been dead until Rick worked to sort of kind of bring him back. He stayed on the ground holding his dead grandfather and crying until a glowing green portal opened up in the wall in front of him and another Morty dressed in white council guard clothing stepped through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to end this where I think that Pocket Mortys would sort of begin, maybe Guard Mortys and Evil Morty have a bit to do with the game.


End file.
